The Weavers Poem by Linda Gregerson

The Weavers



As sometimes, in the gentler months, the sun
will return
before the rain has altogether
stopped and through

this lightest of curtains the curve of it shines
with a thousand
inclinations and so close
is the one to the

one adjacent that you cannot tell where magenta
for instance begins
and where the all-but-magenta
has ended and yet

you'd never mistake the blues for red, so these two,
the girl and the
goddess, with their earth-bred, grass-
fed, kettle-dyed

wools, devised on their looms
transitions so subtle no
hand could trace nor eye discern
their increments,

yet the stories they told were perfectly clear.
The gods in their heaven,
the one proposed. The gods in
heat, said the other.

And ludicrous too, with their pinions and swansdown,
fins and hooves,
their shepherds' crooks and pizzles.
Till mingling

with their darlings-for-a-day they made
a progeny so motley it
defied all sorting-out.
It wasn't the boasting

brought Arachne all her sorrow
nor even
the knowing her craft so well.
Once true

and twice attested.
It was simply the logic she'd already
taught us how
to read.

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